Monthly Archives :
April 2003

There was a distinct feeling of deja vu from 1994 in the air this week. Back then, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak saved the international community from embarrassment by physically forcing Yasser Arafat to sign the Gaza-Jericho agreement on live television. This week, Mubarak sent the commander of his intelligence service to repeat the performance. General…

After three weeks of intense fighting, the American military offensive against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq more or less ended last Saturday. The military operation can be compared to smashing down pieces on a chess board by a violent hand and rearranging them according to a new guiding logic. The manner in which the pieces…

BAGHDAD – At first glance, the smiling faces of the Iraqi throngs who mobbed the streets of Baghdad throughout Wednesday were cause for unadulterated jubilation. US and British forces, after 12 years, have finally arrived to liberate them from the terror regime of Saddam Hussein. The smiles on the faces of the pillaging mobs making…

BAGHDAD – A smiling burka-clad Shi'ite woman gave a big thumbs-up to the US forces she passed as she walked along the road in southern Baghdad, dragging a bathtub she had just looted. 'Go Bush! Yes America!' she called out. Thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians took to the streets of Baghdad yesterday, smiling and…

HIGHWAY 8, SOUTH BAGHDAD – At nightfall Monday US forces had taken over footholds in large swaths of Baghdad. The 3rd Infantry Division's Second Brigade was located at the center of the city. The 3rd Brigade was located in northwest Baghdad and the Marines were located in the city's northeast. The 1st brigade was still securing the…

SADDAM INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT – US forces continued Sunday to destroy Iraqi Republican Guard Units in and around Baghdad in their bid to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime. By the afternoon, 3rd Infantry Division and Marine Corps units had enveloped some 90 percent of Baghdad. The 3rd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade destroyed a Republican Guard tank battalion…

BAGHDAD AIRPORT – A call came over the radio at 2:30 p.m. Saturday: Two truckloads of Iraqi civilians, displaced when the US Army took over the Saddam Hussein International Airport in Baghdad late Thursday night, would be moving through the lines escorted on either side by Army vehicles. The call was a warning not to shoot; the…

BAGHDAD AIRPORT – 'We are on an offensive-oriented mission. Our job is to destroy the enemy. We defend the airfield by destroying the enemy around us,' explained Lt. Col. Scott Rutter, commander of the 2-7 Mechanized Infantry Battalion, at a command briefing to his officers Saturday afternoon. The 2-7 Battalion, together with the 3-69 Battalion…

I just finished my first 'Ranger pudding.' Sitting in the back of the Bradley fighting vehicle, I followed the recipe instructions I received a few days ago from one of the guys in the battalion: 'You take the cocoa powder pouch in the MREs [combat rations], add a pouch of instant coffee, fill the cocoa pouch…

About 30 minutes after a suicide bomber killed four soldiers from the 2-7 Mechanized Infantry Battalion, Operations Officer Maj. Rod Coffey stood before the maps lying on the table of the battalion operation tent absentmindedly but violently smashing his plastic water bottle on the table. Coffey managed the front-rear coordination of the operation to secure the checkpoint on Highway…